A statement presenting damask, plain silk, brocade, figured silk and the rest進綾絹錦綺等狀
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 2 passages · 154 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 5 — Memorials to the Throne A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.
1One hundred thousand bolts, lengths and taels
進奉綾絹錦銀綺等一十萬疋段兩。謹具色目如後物色。
Damask, plain silk, brocade, silver and figured silk and the rest presented as tribute, one hundred thousand in bolts, lengths and taels. The kinds are respectfully set out below. The items.
2Tribute is small because the surrendered must be fed
For the above: your servant humbly considers that weapons of war blaze on every side and that the prefectures and towns are worn and broken. I look up and think of the progress of the imperial carriage, and my one regret is that the taxes and the carts are wanting and in arrears. How much more so when, within the districts this circuit patrols, those who have surrendered are very many, and all of them ask to be kept and settled here. They must be provided for and fed, and it is more precious to put an end to the trouble of bandits and soldiers, so the rite of tribute can hardly be made rich. The damask, plain silk, brocade and figured silk named above were made on the mandarin duck loom, yet in worth they are put to shame by the shark's chamber. They fall far short of the name of the eight silkworms, and they barely reach the name of the three grades. They only set forth what the land makes fitting. How should they be enough to serve for the mending of the sky? Their lightness and smallness are already great, so how should I be easy in my dread? These bolts and goods your servant respectfully sends Wang Shenqiu and others, Supernumerary Commanders of Horse and Foot under the Military Commissioner, to take charge of and to present with this statement. Respectfully presented.